Coinsquare Review - is it scam or safe?

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Trading Accounts

Account type

Minimum deposit

Leverage

Maker Fee

Taker Fee

Standard

$100

N/A

0.10%*

0.20%*

*These are the fees applied for regular trading. A Quick Trade, feature is available, where fees can go up to 0.4%

Coinsquare is one of the leading Canadian cryptocurrency exchanges. While other companies attempt to present themselves as global entities, this one puts a very strong emphasis on its origin and this shows in the service provided.

The company, security of funds

Company

Country

Regulation

Coinsquare

Canada

N/A

Coinsquare is based in Toronto. This is heavily advertised as a positive factor, as Canada is obviously a developed country with a sound financial and regulatory environment.

The focus on Canadian customers is further underlined by the fact the company offers trading against the CAD. While this is a major currency, followed closely by a lot of forex traders, it is by no means widely used out of the country, as the US dollar for instance. That being said the Base currency of your Coinsquare account can be: CAD, USD, EUR, GBP, AUD or BTC.

Trading in some exotic forms of metals trading is also available at Coinsquare. We will cover them later on in the review.

A 95% cold storage policy is implied at Coinsquare. This is a solid measure, which guarantees a very high level of security. While we are on the topic, Coinsquare has not been involved in a major hacking scandal.

There are relatively few reviews on Coinsquare. While the service is easy to use, some users apparently didn’t understand the fee structure completely.

Another interesting, but not crucial point is that this is one of the few exchanges, which exclusively states it doesn’t provide services to residents of New York. Of course, this is due to the 2015 BitLicence, which attempts to regulate cryptocurrency exchanges in the Big Apple.

Trading conditions

Trading instruments (cryptocurrencies)

When building a portfolio at Coinsquare one can include several assets, including some which are even more unusual than cryptocurrencies.

Additionally they allow trading in gold and silver Bars, as well as silver coins. These are traded differently than the spot pairs XAU/USD and XAG/USD, which forex traders are probably familiar with. We are not certain if the instruments offered by Coinsquare are only financial or feature physical delivery of the coins and bars upon request.

Minimum initial deposit

The minimum initial deposit at Coinsquare is $100. Given the Canadian focus of this company, we are not sure if this is measured in USD or CAD. This is a reasonable level of an initial investment, which is also required by a lot of forex brokers, like FxPro.

While one of the payment methods at Coinsquare has a lower minimum deposit, $100 is needed in order to confirm your bank account, which you will need in order to make a withdrawal. These details will be covered below.

Leverage

Coinsquare does not currently support margin trading. This is expected, as the company is targeting beginners and allowing the creation of a more long-term portfolio. Other crypto-exchanges do offer margin trading for some coins.

That being said, some forex brokers, like FXTM offer another way of trading cryptocurrencies. They support CFDs on cryptocurrencies (most commonly Bitcoin), which are used as a speculative instrument. These derivatives carry a few specifics, like the ability to use leverage and the fact you don’t actually own the coins you speculate on. For a more detailed explanation click here.

Fees

The fee structure at Coinsquare Is transparent. This can't be said for some of the UK companies operating in the cryptocurrency space. The costs of making transaction on Coinsquare are in-line with the rest of the industry. They charge 0.10% for market makers (the traders who passively provide liquidity to the exchange) and 0.20% for market takers – the ones buying or selling directly at the best possible price. Nowadays some exchanges, like GDAX charge 0.25%.

Additionally a QuickTrade feature is available. It has slightly higher fees, which can go up to 0.4%, depending on the asset class.

Trading platform

Coinsquare offers a web-based interface, as well as a mobile app. We chose the word interface, as their offering represents what a long term investor will use to look at her assets instead of an actual trading platform, like MetaTrader4 (MT4), for instance. That being said, it does its job pretty well. Here is a preview:

The section which requires account verification features a pie-chart of your holdings, once you have any. Charting in this section is very basic with little room for technical analysis. Additionally candlesticks are supported in the “advanced charting” section:

While this is nothing special, this exchange does not target veteran traders, so it’s acceptable. However, here is a preview of the order book for Bitcoin trading against the Canadian dollar:

As you can see the liquidity is fairly deep, given the relatively exotic currency in question.

Methods of payment

Coinsquare accepts Bank transfers, Interac Online, and a cryptocurrency transfers. That being said there are a lot of details, regarding Canadian transfers. Here is a snapshot of all the offering (click to zoom-in):

Conclusion

Coinsquare is a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange. The company offers a gateway to Bitcoin and other similar assets, with a great emphasis on the domestic market. They offer great security features and appear to be a safe company to deal with. Trading veterans will find their entire offering a bit too basic. That being said if you are Canadian and new to the world of crypto, this looks like a solid way to start. Here is a summary of the strong and weak points of Coinsquare:

Grand Capital (www.grandcapital.net) is an award-winning binary options broker, offering trading in most popular assets on the widely used MetaTrader 4 platform under pretty good trading conditions.

24Option is probably the largest and most reputable binary option broker. It is regulated by CySec and all client deposits up to EUR 20 000 are guaranteed by Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). 24Option offers 100% bonus on deposit.

Traders` reviews for Coinsquare

I have an account with this company I cant login to my account, have tried to email them to get my account recovery back, but they have not responded to me at all after 3 emails. I have money in my account and they seem to not get back to me obviously they don't care about there customers.

someone hacked my online banking and transferred my money (2500 then 2000 CAD) to your company. There should be policies implemented to prevent this kind of situation. I am assuming the hacker has bitcoin under his name bought through my online banking. There is no ID verification or any kind of verification upon purchase which allows the hackers to enjoy other people money. I would like to receive a clarification as I am willing to take legal action against this company that is selling a currency product without verifying the buyers income. This open a wide door for more hacking and fraud.

Hello everyone. I believe that we are a lot of people in the same boat. Would it be a great idea to take a class action against them ? Let's take legal action on them and destroy this before it harms anyone else !

100 % agree, coinsquare is run by scammers. they prey on unsuspecting users. they falsely inflate the spreads to milk all your earnings. Here is a real world example Market rate was at $9870. I go on to buy btc from 2 platforms. coinsquare was trying to charge me $11,135.61 meanwhile, I was buying on another platform for $9879 at the exact same time. In other words they were literally trying to pocket $1256 from one single transaction by falsely inflating the spread by astronomical proportions. I was actually on the other platform watching the buys and sells, and their prices were not even on the board......they were totally lying about the rates, over inflating HUGE. When I email them, they sent me back an absolutely ludicrous excuse.

My opinion is i am calling Ontario securities commission tomorrow and any other government agency that will check as to why the metals and other altcoins can’t be traded or sold in my account and I can’t withdraw them. I will never put a dime into this account again, the whole crypto coins is crap you might have value on a screen but turn it into cash good luck stay away from it worse than mutual funds or commodity trading or penny stock

I used coinsquare for some trading and as soon I started making profits, they froze my account, told me I was manipulated the market and affecting 'their' order books. This is ridiculous, I was simple playing a split and placing orders on either side and actually making some money.

I suspect it was taking profits from 'their' order splits, which they clearly run automated orders of 9BTC * 3 sets of orders on both sides of USD/BTC exchange, yet they accused me of automated trading aids, done all manually. What a joke, support answered me but only told me they were ended our relationship. No warnings, no feedback, just sudden locking my account. I was able to transfer my BTC elsewhere, but I DO NOT recommend this exchange for any trading as they seem to not allow you to make profits from trading.

Sergei had the same experience above, and I concur with his assumptions.

Awesome concept, great looking and total scam. Their dashboard is completely inaccurate and you will spontaneously lose money making trades that look good at the moment. You are much better off playing the stock market or another platform than this website. They won't even let me take what's left of my money out.

I only join Coinbase because by bank BMO stopped customers from buying Bitcoin from Coinbase so i signed up for Coinsquare i sent money E-transfer the money was accepted fast and i was able to buy Bitcoin but its been over 1 month now i have been trying to get my Bitcoin off their Exchange with no help just the same messages telling to cancel and re withdraw. I hope i havent lost my money but if i do get my money off their exchange i will never make that mistake again with Coin Square that exchange is a MT.GOX waiting to happen dont use COINSQUARE

They only tell about trading fees everywhere. But who tells you that they charge a ridiculous amount of 0.0025 BTC for every transfer? Yes, this leaves me speechless. This is today 35 Canadian Dollars for 1 simple transfer from Coinbase to any address. When a BTC still was just 1 buck, it was a reasonable price.

Terrible support, shady activities.
I used to trade on coinsquare exchange for a while last year with no issues until they froze my account without any explanation. Support was completely silent. After a while they allowed me to withdraw fund, but no trading. Again without any explanation. Since support was silent, I registered new account and after short while trading stopped working on it as well, support finally responded with something like "account is under investigation..." and stopped communicating with me as well, no more details provided ever. After few more accounts opened and blocked I noticed a pattern - they block your accounts as soon as you start getting some profit from trading. They block your account possibly because you are taking some profit from their shady activities. At least that's my speculations since they refuse to provide any explanation.

Their largest investor: Riot Blockchain, is a publicly traded stock on the NASDAQ. Please contact the media if this company has scammed you, and mention Riot Blockchain because they are also taking your money!

A few places to contact: CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, SeekingAlpha, etc. Just mention that you were scammed by Coinsquare and that others should know to avoid this at all costs. Also mention that Riot Blockchain is a major owner of this company and should be liable for some of this.

As a test I bought just $10 dollars digital coins here.Then try to sell it back and cash it out.
I lost the $10. Tried to contact support.
You can not talk to anyone and there is no physical location for this web site.
Most likely a web developer in his/her basement created this websiet to steal your money. Imagine if he/she can steal one dollar from 10 million people. How much money he gets. A 649 lotto max. I feel I have been abused.
Feel bad for those people who trades hundreds of dollars on this website.

@Coinsquare I transferred funds from my TD account to @Coinsquare's TD account on Thursday last week. They said it takes 0-3 days and its almost 4 business days now. This doesn't make sense. It was in their account instantly and yet they haven't released it to me.

Do not deal with this company. They are scammers and its been 9 weeks since I created a support ticket. I doubt they even have an office. They take your money, make money on both sides of the transaction (not real time trading), show you different denominations of the currencies you are trading so you never know the true value.The worst part is when you try to withdraw your OWN Canadian funds. They claim that you are the ONLY person to be having this issue, but it looks like just from this small review page that this is another lie by Coinsquare. Boycott this company, its a scam. AVOID!

Beware of Coinsqaure it looks good it's easy to get money on but ounce your money is on the site they have you!! it takes forever if you want to transfer Alt coins out of your square coin wallets. and if you do transfer money out they hold like 40% of it. it took me 10 min to send my litecoin from coinbase to squarecoin. I then wanted to tranfer my litecoin from square coin to guadriga and it's bin more then 12 hours and not a bit of my litecoin has transferred.and don't bother trading because when you buy a coin at a certain price. then when you get a quote to sell that coin, they do not give you the current market value of the coin. they will sell it back to you a 5-10 % bellow market value.

This weekend, I was informed that all my bank accounts were frozen. Apparently someone transferred $2000 from our account to Coinsquare (they managed to hack into my BMO account). It will take about 10 days for the bank to investigate and refund the funds. There is a mortgage payment due before then! Anyway, be careful with this company.

Never ever use this exchange. they will stab you with high fees and THE PRICE IS NOT ACCURATE, it is waaaay off. no customer service either. worst experience ever. you will struggle in withdrawing your money

Wow! I thought I was the only one having problems with getting money out.

Reading all the emails below with the exact same problem I am having is not comforting. Coinsquare does not return my emails either. This appears to be a fraudulent organization, and would not recommend to anyone.

I am looking for advice on how to put more pressure on this organization. I found a phone number for their parent company but turns out it's someone's personal cell phone.

I have been with Coinsquare for over a month. In that time the system
Has never allowed me to make a trade or transfer my money out.

I have sent hundreds of E mails to customer service and have had next to zero response.
Most reviews that I can find on Facebook is that people cannot get their money out.

I have run out of patience with this company. I have even personally made contact with Cole Diamond CEO and chief executive office. He personally answered me and stated that I would have the matter resolved.

Once again I have not heard back from anyone in the company.

This company is either to small or is a scam. I am leaning towards a scam.

I don’t recommend Coinsquare. Very poor to zero service and they won’t give you your money back.

No happy with Coinsquare - put $1000 in my account (very easy) did some trading for a couple of weeks and then decided to move $500 out - worked great at first showed up in my bank account chequing THEN 3 day later it got reversed out of my bank account -wtf
emailed support and they put it back into my coinsquare account minus the $5.05 transfer fee. So now instead of having $505 I have $499.95 to transfer
I reply to their email that they sent me saying the problem was fixed and said please put it back into my bank chequing account where it was taken from.
NO ANSWER - So I then try to transfer the $499.95 and guest what!!!
cash transfer are not available - wtf
This is a scam - don't walk run you will never get your money out

I am account holder in coinsquare. This is third time that the web site is not opening sometimes. When I need to trade the coins or see the status of my account, the site is not opening and give me a big upset on this matter. Given the demand on the site why you can't provide a strong server to meet all the clients as the number of new entrants are increasing unprecedently.

These guys are a joke. Super high fees, glitchy website, and stupid rules, super long delays zero customer support. I occasionally got emails outlining vague problems with directions to check the site immediately but no actual message. Complete waste of time. I feel like most of these trading sites have a long way to go but this one is among the worst

Coming on three weeks without a response to my support ticket! Transaction to my wallet is verified on the blockchain but not in my coinsquare wallet? I literally copy and pasted my coinsquare wallet into the blockchain and can see that the transaction is verified, and should be in my wallet, but the website shows a balance of zero.

I haven’t had any issues with Coinsquare; the fees are a little higher than others especially for Bitcoin but that is to be expected with higher mining rates all over. I only wish they had more alt-coin options.

Was able to open account as well as arrange Interac trans instantly. Also trade quickly. Got familiar with ledger (transaction records). Able to test and understand entire funds SECURELY transfer including deposit to my banking acc.
Word of caution when trading make to sure to understand the quoted price and amount to fully understand the buying/sale price to ensure your gains/loses (Very important). This caution is because the quote price of a given unit is per $ vs dash board has unit price. I have successfully tested entire transaction flow in real time and I am very satisfied. Again must make sure your buying or selling price. When trading you MUST get as many quotes you to ensure your price. Coinsquare doe not offer your trade price may be due to the way crypto works.

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